4 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your Android Device Without Using Third Party Apps

When you first brought your brand new Android phone home, you were probably amazed at how fast it was. Over time you may have noticed that things have slowed down, and you’ve become very well acquainted with the virtue of patience. No worries though. This doesn’t mean there’s a problem with your phone, but there are ways to restore its speed to fresh-out-of-the-box condition. You can use the tips below to speed up your Android device and enjoy the smooth, lightning-quick OS we have all come to love.

1. Running Out of Room

You know all those photos and videos you’ve taken over the last few months (give or take a few) and all those apps you’ve downloaded from the Play store? They can make your phone feel sluggish, kind of like an out of breath jogger. Your mighty Android needs room to breathe so it can run smoothly. If you’re low on space, you’ll notice your Android wheezing.

You can check how much space you have to work with by tapping “Settings -> Storage.” One of the first steps you can take to free up space is tap “Settings -> Apps” and browse around to see which apps you can uninstall and live without.

To uninstall an app, just tap the entry on the displayed list and tap “Uninstall.” You can do this as many times as you need for any apps you feel you can part with.

You can also free up space by cleaning out any files you may have downloaded. Tap “Settings -> Storage -> Downloads.” Select the files you want to remove and toss them in the trash. You can take it a step further if you’re feeling frisky and tap the “Cached Data” option and free up some additional space. A lot of the apps you’ve installed use data caches in an attempt to speed things up.

To clear the cached data just tap “Settings -> Storage -> Cached Data.” However, clearing the cached data is only effective up to a certain point, especially if you’re running out of space.

2. Ditch Some Widgets

Any widgets you have running on your home screen may slide by with the excuse that they’re useful, but you need to keep in mind that they’re sucking up their fair share of resources just like everything else.

Take inventory of how many widgets you have running and how many you actually use. Consider disabling the ones you don’t really need. It’s no big deal to have a few running, but you’ll notice a significant difference in the speed at which your phone operates if you allow yourself to be a little bit picky and disable a few.

3. Stop Apps Running in the Background

First things first, you need to know which apps are running background processes and how power hungry they are. Power hungry apps running in the background can have a significant impact on the speed of your phone. To figure out which apps are slowing down your Android, you need to enable “Developer Options.”

In Developer Options, you’ll see the option to tap “Process Stats.” This will tell you how much time your key apps are running and the amount of RAM they are using.

You can see how much battery your apps are draining by tapping “Settings -> Battery.”

If you see some apps that you think are using a crazy amount of power or running in the background much more than it should thereby slowing down your device, then you can disable the app in your App Manager, force stop in the Running Tab, or just uninstall if you don’t really need it.

To disable an app running in the background, just tap “Settings -> Apps -> App Name you want to disable -> Force Stop.” Pretty easy, right?

Some of the most common speed suckers running in the background include music players you aren’t using, games you don’t play that often, and other apps that seem to be doing a lot more than they should. Example: a stock keyboard running in the background when you’re using a third party keyboard.

4. Restart Your Android Device

A quick and easy fix for a slower-than-Christmas phone is to just restart it. This can stop unnecessary app tasks from running, clear out the cache, and get things running back to normal. If you’ve never restarted your device before, it’s pretty simple. Just hold down the Power button, tap Restart, and then tap OK to confirm that’s what you want to do.

Conclusion

Just about every phone on the market – past, present, or future – will need a little speed-up maintenance at some point during its life. When you begin to notice that apps are taking a little longer to load, and there’s some lag time between tapping an app and the app responding, don’t hesitate to do a little clean up. Be good to your Android, and your Android will be good to you.